


phantom limbs

by atroublesomegoose



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Heavy Angst, One Shot, Unresolved Romantic/Sexual Tension, and needed to throw it all into an Angsty McSadFic, and these two in particular, anyway everyone in this game deserved better and I care about all of them, basically I had a lot of feelings about this game, bc homedude is dead, being the final girl ain't all it's cracked up to be. obviously, it's a mess my guy, like......the most intense type of unresolved romantic/sexual tension, self-guilt/survivors guilt/complicated feelings, that's how u know it's good lmao, this game somehow compelled my dumbass to write fanfiction after six years of vehemently refusing to, what else to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23103859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atroublesomegoose/pseuds/atroublesomegoose
Summary: In her dreams, she returned.Snow crunched under her feet, she hoisted herself up-up-over. The lodge reconstructed itself and broke apart endlessly, splintering into sharp, angular shapes and filling the missing spaces with billows of smoke and blood. Monsters howled, louder than the wind, outside the windows-through the door-behind her.Everything was blood spilling over snow, cliffs with drops that never ended, brittle hands and unseeing eyes.And him. So many versions of him.
Relationships: Sam Giddings/Josh Washington, but it does explore their relationship/dynamic...what might have been/assorted nonsense like that, kinda?? it's mostly sam-centric
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	phantom limbs

**Author's Note:**

> lurks into this fandom and drops this at the door……u can catch me listening to daughter and getting Big Sad™ about these two

The funeral was on a Tuesday.

Even (or perhaps, especially) there, they were unwanted. 

Things had leaked from their interviews with police. Tall tales of skeletal creatures with impossibly long claws and mouths full of razor-sharp teeth, gripped with anger and driven by an insatiable hunger. Fierce insistence that they lurked on the edges of the woods and scurried through long-forgotten mine shafts. 

How they hunted, how they killed. 

Unbelievable stories. Teenagers with endlessly tired eyes, clothes torn and bodies covered in wounds, mouths floundering for words. It was clear that _something_ had happened up there that night, but not that. Absolutely not _that._

You couldn't blame people, really—monsters weren't real, after all. 

The truth tasted wrong in people's mouths, sounded off to their ears, muddied up and ran down the page in a mass of confusion. All you were left with was numbers, a sick game of subtraction. 

They were ten, and then they were eight, and now they were seven.

_Lucky number seven._

It would almost be hilarious, if it wasn't so terribly sad. Hours and hours in psychological evaluations, and no one thought to go up there, to see for themselves.

Unpleasant truths, smoothed into carefully curated lies.

And so they shrugged on their shrouds and went, because the real lie would have been not going. 

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, they were wavering blurs, impressions of people that used to exist in one way but didn’t _(and wouldn’t)_ anymore. Seven shadows of kids in varying shades of black, eyes all fixed on the pale blanket of lilies and gladioli spilling over the gleaming black of an empty casket.

_(One last reunion at Josh's place.)_

Sam chewed at the inside of her mouth.

They’d been here before, tugging on their sleeves and digging their heels into the earth. Twin graves, matching death-bouquets, for girls who were gone, swallowed up by the night.

 **MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD.** _(We’re making it through this still, right?)_

The lack of a body made this feel all the more insubstantial, like they were walking the fine line of reality. A pregnant pause of inactivity, the restless expectation before the punchline of a joke. Any moment now, Josh would pop out from behind the headstone, a wicked grin spreading across his face. And it would be awful, but it would be a manageable kind of awful.

_Holy shit, you should see your faces! Man, this is classic. CLASSIC._

She thought of forgotten people clawing helplessly at metal walls, flames climbing into the sky, and all the empty graves everywhere in the world.

_The past is beyond our control. Come on Sammy, you know that. I told you._

She swallowed down the bile collecting at the back of her throat. Fishing in her pocket, her fingers closed around cold metal, and her eyes went blurry and unfocused. With a soft exhale, she tossed the cable car key into the grave, listened to it ping gently against the hollow steel of the casket.

Maybe she’d dented it. Probably not, but she could hope.

As if on cue, it began to rain.

There was something perversely cinematic about the way the sky opened up, rain pelting onto the grass. A sea of black umbrellas fanned out, the dark maw of the earth yawning open wide. 

Sam’s mouth twitched into a frown. It was all _too_ thematic, a perfectly macabre cliché. An imagined version of a funeral. Like this had been where they’d been heading the whole time, the last act in a story that never should have been told. But the author had written it anyway, because _of course_ he had.

_(Weren't these things supposed to be for the living?)_

“Thanks for showing up, Josh.” She said to the sky. 

* * *

_Go back._

_Before whispered giggles and video cameras, before missing posters and the spiral of press coverage. Before the temperature dropped, the snow swirling in dizzying circles. Before Josh disappeared into himself (and then into the mountain). A year and six months ago now. An eternity between then and now._

_Go back._

* * *

“Will you stop doing that?” Sam elbowed Josh’s arm.

“Stop what?” Utterly unapologetic, as always.

“Looking over at me. You’re creeping me out, Washington.”

“I just need to know that you’re appreciating this _cacophony_ of debauchery and terror, Sam.”

“I’m _appreciating_ my popcorn.”

* * *

She still couldn’t take baths. _The mountain giveth, and the mountain taketh away._

It was summer now, the heat baking the concrete and leaving the hair hot and sticky at the base of her neck. Logically, the mountain should have changed too, with the season (all leaves and trees and flowery shrubs)—but in her mind, it would always be swollen with snow, frozen forever under a mass of unrelenting ice. 

If she looked in the mirror long enough, let the steam melt away slowly from the glass, she could picture him leaning lazily in the doorway. Halfway-smirking, watching her in that here-but-gone-way she hadn’t realized she needed to worry about. 

_Need any help?_

Blink. Breathe. She was alone in the bathroom.

* * *

“How did I get roped into this, again?” Sam sighed.

“Our friends, consumed by a swirl of _burgeoning_ teenage hormonal urges, ditched us to play Find The Sausage—" Josh drawled out, waggling his brows. "—Respectively, of course. And the two of us...as the only _cultured_ ones, were left to enjoy an uninterrupted horror movie marathon. It’s great.”

“Uh- _huh_.” 

“An uninterrupted horror movie marathon...in a _mansion_...that belongs to a movie mogul’s _son_ , might I add. This is some exclusive shit, babes.”

"Lucky me."

* * *

It started out small. 

Sam was the one who suggested meeting at the coffee shop. It got her out of her house and away from her parents, with their gentle concern and worried eyes. They loved her, but they couldn't believe her. She didn't blame them. The person she had become didn't fit into spaces the same anymore (and they could tell, even though she tried to hide it). The house was no exception, and it was to be avoided when possible.

She remembered walking through Hannah’s room in the lodge. The dotted bedspread and glittery pillows, a kaleidoscope of papers pinned on a corkboard. Butterflies on the walls. Frozen in time, a capsule of the past for their resident phantom. 

Hannah’s room, hers. An exploration of haunted places.

The window in her room, with its pale green curtains. He’d snuck inside through it once, sat on her bedroom floor and just talked. About nothing, about everything. She’d listened. They kept their distance and the air was warm and full of things left unsaid. When she woke up the next morning he was gone. He never mentioned it, and she didn’t either. Some things are just secret.

She kept it locked now. Checked it twice before bed.

_Wash your hair, brush your teeth, put on some fresh clothes. Open the door. Feel your feet hit the pavement because you’re real, you’re really real, and you’re alive. Because you have to be._

Keep it relaxed, don’t expect everybody to show up. 

And at first it was just her, a trail of weak excuses piled up in her text messages. And then it was Chris and Ashley—an almost that had become a reality—knocking knees under the table, sharing an overpriced cocoa. 

_Mike. Jess. Matt. Emily._

Seven was an immovable, unshakable number. She had to keep it seven.

The jangle of bells, another chair added to the table. 

People noticed them, as people did. They were the cursed ones, pictures flashed on television screens across the country, teenage harbingers of death. A tragic group of trauma-celebrities. Or killers? Take your pick, everybody else did.

She collected herself, counted her limbs, took tally of the points of light in the room. She was a stranger to herself, impossibly changed and yet still too young to do anything about it. 

Maybe this was what growing up really felt like.

* * *

  
“Do I think these things are just excuses to get random hot chicks into their underwear before they inevitably die? Uh, _yeah._ It’s blatant. Like, why does she _need_ to be practically naked? What does that add to the scene?!”

“Tsk. You just don’t get the beauty of horny horror cinematography, Sammy. It’s _ART_.”

“Ahh, of course. _Wow._ Look at that close-up on the outline of her nipple. The artistry, the vision. Those angles! This is _peak_ filmmaking. You’re _so_ right.”

“Take it from a professional—”

A sharp laugh burst from her mouth. “Professional?! Professional clown, maybe?”

“Uh, if I was a clown, I’d be scary as shit, Sammy. Come on!”

* * *

“You okay, Sam?” Chris, knowing the answer. But he wouldn’t push it, not yet.

“Yeah, of course.” She smiled. 

And some days were easy, and some weren’t. But the nights were always different.

* * *

  
“You gotta wait for it, Sammy. It’s the tension…the anticipation of the scare. You know it’s coming, but _she_ doesn’t.” The words tumbled out of his mouth quickly. Even without looking, she could tell that he was grinning. “She doesn’t suspect that—”

The girl on the screen crept slowly through the hallway, her eyes wide with terror. Josh fell silent. Staccato bursts of strings ratcheted up as she reached for a doorknob, hands shaking wildly. A shadow loomed behind her as the music built to a roaring crescendo, the killer's gloved hand exploding from the darkness. 

“—HE'S BEEN BEHIND HER THIS WHOLE TIME!” He yelled, jostling Sam's shoulders. And maybe she let out a little yelp, because he had totally _unfairly_ startled her, and she was only human. Maybe.

“Oh my god!” Sam groaned, flicking his arm. “You’re incorrigible.”

“Don’t you mean ‘in…credibly intelligent and attractive jack-of-all-trades’? Because I _think_ you meant _that_.”

* * *

In her dreams, she returned. Snow crunched under her feet, she hoisted herself up-up-over. The lodge reconstructed itself and broke apart endlessly, splintering into sharp, angular shapes and filling the missing spaces with billows of smoke and blood. Monsters howled, louder than the wind, outside the windows-through the door-behind her.

Everything was blood spilling over snow, cliffs with drops that never ended, brittle hands and unseeing eyes.

And him. So many versions of _him._

Usually he chased her, through twisted facsimiles of the lodge, out into the snow. The mask adhered to his skin, melting down to bone, and sometimes there was a sting of a needle, and sometimes there was a smothering of gas, and sometimes there was just darkness.

Everything changed but everything stayed the same, in a nightmare for two.

* * *

“But it’s so painfully obvious it’s him.” Sam rolled her eyes.

“Maybe she doesn’t want to admit it. _Shh._ You’re gonna miss the best part.”

His arm had found its way behind her neck, his hand playing idly with the loose strands of hair from her ponytail. If she moved, she’d break out of this moment, and they’d fold back into themselves.

This hadn't been part of her plan for the day (plan with a capital 'P', like her collection of carefully curated planners and notebooks, highlighted in pink and underlined twice), but Sam was nothing if not adaptable. She could pencil this in later. This was fine. 

And yet.

He was just so overwhelming _there_ , smelling of mint and aftershave and soap. And something underneath it all, distant and vast and entirely _Boy_. Memories on memories, springs and summers and winters, and everything in-between. Reconcile the kid you’ve known, your best friend’s older brother, all awkward limbs and large, half-wild eyes, with the person sitting next to you.

Equal parts familiar and unknown, washing through her all at once, escaping in a tight exhale of breath.

“You alright? Getting scared?”

“You wish.”

* * *

Often, she was trapped watching loops of his death play out on screen. His fake-death, his imagined real-death, a million times over. The rumble of a voice behind her, a fluttering behind her ribcage. Hundreds of butterflies catching in her throat, spilling from her mouth, their rotten corpses twitching on the floor. 

Fire scorched through her veins, burning every synapse, setting her limbs on alight, trembling upon trembling. Her heart felt too large, pressing against her chest, slicing itself open on bone. A scream lost in another wave of fire, vomit dripping down her chin. The air smelled of sickness and dirt and blood. 

The pain would send her to her knees, clawing helplessly at her skin, snot and vomit and tears congealing into a wet mass on her face. The wind wailing, wailing, wailing. The world spun when she closed her eyes, and suddenly the fire would be gone, leaving nothing but cold. Numbness from the inside out, ice water for blood.

Those were the good nights.

On the worst nights, she found herself in the mines. Soaked with sweat, she would sink onto the ground, waiting for the rustle of movement behind her. It was nothing _(everything)_ to be afraid of. He would sit beside her, free of any mask, any pretense. He was just plain old Josh, with the wind tousling his hair and his eyes soft, his chin perched in his palm.

His fingers laced with hers _(solid and strong and so real it hurt)_ , and the ground rumbled. Sparks of fire snapped, beams of wood cracked, and when the floor fell out from under them, he finally looked at her.

And sometimes she managed to hold onto his hand as they fell, but most of the time she didn’t. 

* * *

She leaned back, resting her head against the crook of his arm, his chest warm against her shoulder. The girl on the screen screamed, throwing up an arm in an unsuccessful attempt to ward off her attacker. Blood and entrails spilled wildly over the floor, bathing the cinema room in bright red light. 

His fingertips brushed against the side of her neck.

“Sam.” His voice was soft. She angled her face slightly towards his, keeping her eyes on the knit of his sweater, the stubble coasting under his chin. _When had she ended up halfway across the console?_ The room flashed red again. They were so _close_ , and suddenly it was _years-months-days ago-now_ , all at once.

“You guys making out in there?” Mike, with Hannah not too far behind. 

With that, the moment ended, and she got to her feet, brushing popcorn kernels off her jeans.

* * *

And maybe if she’d stayed, maybe. 

And maybe not, you know.


End file.
